Posts Tagged ‘management’

Appreciative Inquiry is a particular way of asking questions and envisioning the future that fosters positive relationships and builds on the basic goodness in a person, a situation, or organization proponents. In so doing, it enhances a system’s capacity for collaboration and change

The limiting factor in the adoption of the internet and social media by businesses is not the technology, it’s the people in charge. Most large consumer businesses have someone responsible for social media. They are 26 and have a job title like Community or Social Media Manager. Because they are 26* and they work in a large business, it’s difficult for them to change the way things work

It seems eleven hours ago someone went back in and responded to every single one of the recent comments made on the page – so props to ALLSAINTS, for either noticing my post, or catching up on weekend activity..

Which begs the question, why were responses to people missing, if someone was updating the page? Perhaps because different people do the posting than the responding – or perhaps because weekend posts had been scheduled.

When I first managed a Facebook page I soon noticed that it’s not a 9-5 role. You can expect activity all hours of the day and days of the week. Scheduling is a fantastic way to lighten some of the burden. But it’s not ideal when scheduling makes you seem ignorant of participants, who will probably be unaware that’s what you’re doing. Especially when it has been shown, for example, that 42% of UK consumers expect a response on social media within 60 minutes.

This is a great reason to think about flexible job roles for social media professionals – for example one day off per week in exchange for putting in an hour each evening and a couple on the weekends. It’s early days for the social web – but if organisations want to appear responsive and engaging on social media, work roles need to adapt accordingly.

I read somewhere recently that the central task of management is to reduce unnecessary communication – white noise that slows people and organisations down. It follows that in this compilation of stats from Tiffany Maleshefski, decision-makers give increased productivity as the most important criterion for judging the success of mobile apps in their enterprises.

Understanding motivation is key to performing well and leading others. This engaging talk by Daniel Pink highlights scientific evidence on achieving success from people in team situations. Ultimately his point is that for routine, simple tasks, monetary rewards that set individual against individual work best – but for complex work, rewards that require people to work together are best.

When trying to engage people online – their motivations might be considered in a similar way. If you want a simple, short-term relationship, or action – give them a competition to enter, to win a prize. However, if you want to develop a longer-term (and thus more complex) relationship – quick fix promotions that engender a quick hit of satisfaction are not going to do it. So, for example, compelling people to ‘like’ a facebook page by throwing competitions at them – without tying that to activity to build value on multiple levels, is wasted if long-term growth is desired. Users are likely to see the value-exchange as superficial, enter the competition and ‘un-like’ swiftly afterwards.

At a promotional level then – social media competitions must be tied into overall creative social concepts that are realised in multiple ways over time, as appropriate to the product or service, and the user’s location, activity, mood and platform/ device. Each concept should be brought to life via activities that provide people with a utility, an experience, and/ or opportunities to share – bearing in mind core human motivations: enjoyment, status seeking, reputation seeking, altruism – and that for more complex participation, offering rewards to people for working together, rather than against one another, will be most successful.